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nipuni · 3 months ago

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Alright, time to share my opinions about Veilguard!! I have both criticism and praise so bear with me as I jump from one extreme to the other 😆 spoilers ahead of course!

The game has a very rough start with the dialogue being formulaic and rushed and the characters overexposing. It feels like a heavy handed attempt at summarizing all of previous games' lore for newcomers or in case you forgot but it's so overdone it feels coddling and trivializes a lot of previous events. Luckily this gets better once all of the introductions are out of the way, though the excessive hints and clarifications continue until the end sadly.

The locations are absolutely incredible and very diverse!! This is a highlight of the game for me. There is so much detail and care in every map and there are so many of them. My pc is struggling to reach medium settings and yet everything looks stunning. The verticality of the maps is so imposing and the graphics have a very dreamy quality that I love. I also enjoy the maze-like structure to the maps, it's more linear but makes everything look a bit more intentional. The color and light direction was amazing, all the visual development really!! it has to be one of the prettiest games I've ever played.

When I started I have to admit it did not feel like I was in Thedas and it all felt a bit theme-parky, if that makes sense. A lot of previously important and established world elements that made Thedas what it is were overlooked or made irrelevant. But the more I played the more it started to feel a bit more similar to Inquisition, for better or worse depending on what you feel about Inquisition. But!! this also feels like a selectively sanitized version of Thedas compared to previous games. In it's attempt to stay safe and uncontroversial in some aspects it loses a lot of substance and it changes the tone. The surface level politics, ignoring previously established major societal issues and a tell-don't-show approach makes the world seem more simple and shallow with no grey areas to explore. ( the humor also falls flat and out of place often too, and WHY is everyone always smirking, enough!! godlike beings are destroying the planet please this is not the time for Marvel banter aaaa )

The pacing at the start is a bit of a mess. It is so fast it felt like jumping from one world shattering discovery to the next with no time to process. The characters also seem to underreact to important information and major developments. It felt like the game was rushing me through all this to get to the part of the story it wanted to tell me while I was still wrapped in my shock blanket trying to catch my breath lmao. I really like all the key story points they touched upon, I just wish they dwelled more on them to give them more narrative weight. ( though blaming every bad thing to ever happen on the Elves was certainly..a choice )

I think the writing could have used more subtlety in the first half and more boldness in the second 😆 but I loved the thematic parallels between Rook and Solas and how every quest informs the main storyline. I do wish Rook was given more impossible choices and put in more difficult situations that forced them to lie or betray their own to better drive the point home though ( listen I just love a Trolley problem!! we need more of those, I'm the Trolley problem's number one fan!! ) I feel like they missed the chance to put Rook in Solas' role and be as vilified and hated for it as Solas was despite their best intentions which would make Rook's regrets stronger and in turn make their escape from the fade all the more impressive and give them a better understanding of Solas to either use against him or earn his respect. The line 'they called me the Dread Wolf, what will they call you when this is over' from the trailers was so good I was waiting for this!! But everyone just loves Rook no matter what!!

But I feel like I stated too many negative aspects in a row so moving on to some things I enjoyed!

The characters were very lovable to me. The romances weren't as long or impactful as I would have liked but I enjoyed all the companion quests. Emmrich is a delight and his quest is so wild and fun. I loved learning about Nevarra and I was awestruck by the Grand Necropolis. The mourn watch was so interesting, it showed a whole new side of Thedas' lore I knew nothing about! and I loved Manfred! Davrin is so charming, he became a favorite. I loved his quest too and learning more bits and pieces about the Dalish was great, I wish we got more. Seeing the Wardens through his quest also made me enjoy them a lot. Assan was very cute too and I'm glad he was treated as an animal and not turned into a goofy Disney sidekick too much lmao 😭 Lucanis is hilarious. The fantasy Spain/Italy was a bit silly and off at times but he is very sweet! and I love the Spite possession, that was so fun I'm glad they kept him that way! Bellara is adorable, her first backstory quest made me cry and I just love a nerd! I wish the second part of her story was written better however, and she sort of devolves into 'it's hard, I wish it was easy but it's hard' dialogues too often sadly. Anaris and the Forgotten Ones' portrayal was underwhelming and anticlimactic which was disappointing. Harding is also very cute and her Titan plotline was the most interesting to me, I bawled my eyes out in her quest!! I love the dwarven lore of this universe I'm so happy we got more of it!! ( she also fucking died in my playthrough?! I was devastated what the hell 😭 'whatever it takes' WEUEUGHHHG I'M SO SORRY) Neve was a slow burn for me because of my choices in game slowing that relationship down ( saving Treviso I mean, perdón amor 🙏 ) but I love detective novels and she is such a badass I ended up loving her. Taash was unexpected, I didn't think they would be so young. The coming of age story was sweet, though I found myself cringing a lot too at the handling of it I have to admit ( and the Lords of Fortune in general, and the Antaam...and que Qun..listen- kajshfgf ) but I also enjoyed learning more about the first expedition and the Qunari in general despite the messy writing and choices. I also loved Antoine and Evka! and Strife! And I haven't even read any of the novels they are in 😆 also Mila!!!! and her dad oh my god and Felassan haunting the narrative!! speaking of haunting, I would have loved for Cole to be in the lighthouse too I think it would have worked well 🤔 especially with the whole 'reading Solas' secret diary' thing the game had going on lmao

Everyone seems to get along except for a bit of friction that is quickly resolved at the start, which is hmm missed potential? I would have preferred more tension personally. I enjoy the drama! gives me more to work with and gives you a better grasp on everyone's personality by contrasting values. I think they wanted to speed run a found family trope for the new hero to establish some emotional stakes early on but it ended up making everyone seem like a group therapy session instead. The group meetings also have everyone either state the obvious or repeat the same opinion or conclusion to each other, I would have loved these meetings to have more bickering, have people get mad and storm out and also get to listen to different takes on a situation. Make Rook struggle more to take the reins and keep the team functional, learning how to be a leader.

Speaking of Rook! ( who in my case has a northern British accent that I loved so much 🥺) They seem to have a very established personality. I was expecting more of a blank slate but I'm lucky that the personality they went for kind of matches what I would normally choose in a first playthrough. Though the lack of range in the choices is irritating and takes away some replayability and role playing potential. Rook is very supportive and selfless, I wasn't expecting this tbh! But it all made my Rook turn into the team's weird supportive necromancer mom so it worked out in the end I guess lmao. I can't wait to draw her!!

I was so overwhelmed by the amount of information we got about Solas and his past!! I was expecting answers but not these many and not for them to be such an integral part of the plot!! The game feels like it's about him more than anything else. His arc is the best written out of all. He is mentioned in every conversation, he's the main advisor and the narrative foil, you get to talk to him often, you work for him and with him and go into his memories it all feels so surreal to me lmao I love him so I'm delighted ngl! but also making the other Evanuris so cartoonishly evil makes Solas into such an obvious choice of an ally, god of trickery or not, that it sort of takes the decision out of your hands and makes some dialogue options and companions' opinions seem almost nonsensical. I have no idea how this game would feel to someone who absolutely hates Solas' guts honestly. I suppose I will find out soon enough 😆

About Solas' story, I loved it! I somehow also feel that I knew it already, all the speculation and theories that Solavellan fans were crafting for years were so accurate that it was all very validating. Even the wildest ones! Solas as the Maker, the elves spirit origin, Mythal giving him a body, the war with the Titans, the origin of the Blight, Solas being on your side as advisor, I can go on, we knew!! Also I have to mention this I'm sorry but they made him look so hot!! unbelievable. And the bloodied teary eyed pathetic look in the end ouurghhh I'm cheering and clapping!!

The romance conclusion was so lovely 😭 the Loki and Sigyn ending we deserved to such a mythological epic!! and open ended enough for all of us to cook!! and we got to see him fight and transform into the Dread Wolf!! and whimper and cry!! and bleed and love!! that's all I ever wanted, incredible we were really spoiled what the hell I still can't believe it 😭 GDL acting was brilliant as usual! the visuals were also incredible and exactly what I had in mind when I imagined where the story may go, the eclipse, the giant wolf, the glowing eyes, the Elvhenan ruins, the statues, even the hair lmao it all aligned exactly to what I've been painting all these years but better I was thrilled 😭

Solas backstory with Mythal also offers players that didn't romance him a chance to see him act out of love and show a side they wouldn't be able to reach otherwise and I think it was smart! also very tragic and sheds more light into all of his choices and words and his relationship with Lavellan too and the parallels and reversals and uughh thoroughly enjoying the emotional distress 👌

Pleasing both the Solas lovers and haters at the same time was always going to be hard with him being such a polarizing character by design and the world states being so different but I think they did a good job! at least from my side of things.

I think my favorite part besides the Solas related stuff was the Blight. I loved how horrific and gross and threatening it was! I've always loved the concept of the Blights and I'm glad it was such a huge part of the story in this game. I also loved Treviso!! has to be the most beautiful city in Thedas ahhh and the Necropolis!! the gardens!! Vorgoth!!! Kal-Sharok!!! I can't believe we got to see it!! and a Titan!!! the giant floating face of Ghilan'nain in the clouds??? and the huge archdemons and dragons!! oh and that warden dragon trap in the shape of a griffon?? and the giant blight tendrils!! the siege at Weisshaupt was outstanding!! and the floating panopticon castle situation in Minrathous uughh there is so much I loved.

OH I also enjoyed the Varric arc even though I saw it coming since the trailer it was still played well and it was touching 🥺

The ending felt a bit jarring to me in tone though, a bit too cheerful considering...the horrors. Over half the continent destroyed and most of the problems Thedas had before the game are still there. Veil in place and all 😆

But I had fun!! I'm nitpicking really, the conclusion to Solas' story feels very satisfying to me which was my main worry so I'm happy. It is a good game!! with a sort of soft reboot feel to it and aimed at a younger audience which is probably what they were going for? You can sort of feel the struggle the team went through during production in the way the target audience seems unclear sadly. I also can't help feeling like this is an ending, so much was revealed and resolved!! but maybe I feel that way because that is what I felt after Shadowbringers / Endwalker in FFXIV once my favorite part of the story was wrapped? They can always pivot to a new continent and expand on the world and cultures we know almost nothing about, but that is always harder to sell so I have no clue where they will go from here 😵‍💫

Anyway I'm still processing a lot of stuff that I will probably talk (and draw) about later, this is already long enough!! for now I'll look up how to get the artbook because the art direction of this game is fantastic!! I would love to hear your thoughts too really, I'm curious about the experiences of players who made different choices and with different tastes to mine!!

#dragon age #veilguard #dragon age the veilguard #dragon age spoilers #veilguard spoilers #da4 spoilers #datv #nips blogs #I don't know what else to tag this there are so many variants #this critique is about the story and writing mostly not the technical aspects btw!#I'm aware some of these changes are unrealistic in terms of cost and time #this is a review not a rant or demand really! or it's trying to be #I enjoyed the game and will be replaying it eventually and modding the hell out of it 😌

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tossawary · 7 months ago

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Honestly, I don't think the Ents were scary enough in the LOTR Jackson films when they attacked Isengard. Like, it's great! It is great! It was amazing to see the first time; the effects are incredible for their time and they still hold up pretty well! I don't need to be told that they had various animation limitations. (More size variation in the Ents could have been nice. They could have been even bigger. But animation limitations and time constraints and such, I know!)

It's just that a lot of the camera shots were looking down on the battle (they're using bigatures and such, I know), so the Ents looked tiny, stomping on tinier orcs, or the camera is sitting with Merry and Pippin on Treebeard's shoulders, and that angle doesn't really get across how HUGE and NON-HUMAN trees are. I think the best shots in this battle sequence are the ones from the perspective of the orcs, where it's just utter chaos, and then some walking tree appears out of nowhere and it's ANGRY WITH YOU. Ideally, I think it would have been great if the storyboarding had leaned more into that bewildered and terrified human perspective more, getting more into the dirt of things, before then zooming out for the overview of the Ents overtaking Isengard for the end of the sequence. The boarding in the film does a lot of jumping in and out in regards to size and what's happening.

Like, have you ever been next to a massive tree in a windstorm? The sort that looms over the roofs of houses? When the whole tree starts swaying in the wind, hundreds of branches twisting like some kind of tentacled beast? And the rustling starts to sound like a dull roar? And you think to yourself, "Oh, if that tall tree ever goes down, it is taking that entire house down with it, cracking open the roof and bashing down the walls. It would smash that car flat. It would crush me easily and I don't even know how I would begin to get out of its way as it falls, because its branches and leaves would just swallow me."

And if you're ever in a heavily wooded area during a windstorm, it's even worse, because the old trees all around you are bending and shaking like they're about to pull up their roots and start walking. Like, you didn't forget that they're alive, did you? And it's beautiful, of course, but it's also dangerous. It looks like they're dancing in their own way, but the amount of wood being thrown around means that one good branch breaking could seriously hurt someone. And it's just a branch to the tree, the tree might be fine, it might just grow another, but that branch could easily be longer and heavier than a person.

It is cool to see all of the other Ents coming out of the woods to back Treebeard up and then go marching forward. But it does raise the question of "Wait, how did the other Ents get there so fast? Aren't they kind of slow?" (If there is lore explaining this, general movie audiences will not know it.) So, it would be fun if Treebeard made his call and the dramatic speech, all alone, and then we could cut away, so we have the plausible deniability of a time skip. There's also the tension of: "Oh, no, is Treebeard going to attack Isengard alone?"

And THEN we could pick back up with orcs on the walls of Isengard, boredly watching the industry below, before the ground starts shaking and the stone beneath their feet cracks. And a huge shadow looms over the wall as a MASSIVE TREE climbs over, basically falling over, and letting its sheer weight take down everything in its path. Followed by dozens more of these creatures. Making the machinery of Isengard look and all the orcs within feel very, VERY small.

If Ents are ever depicted again in any visual adaptation, even an illustrated version of the novel or a graphic novel, I feel like it should be a goal to really capture that feeling of being small and mortal by comparison. Some of the earlier interactions with Merry and Pippin and Treebeard get this feeling well enough. The LOTR films are over and done, obviously, and they did pretty well. But it could be better! I want to LEAN into those moments of smallness just a little more in future adaptations of Middle Earth. I would love to keep the camera LOW as much as possible and utilize advancements like more detailed models and better leaf animation. (Like hair, leaves are hard!)

We are not the Ents here. We are just witnessing them. You have to go out into a forest and ask yourself, "What WOULD it be like if trees walked around me?"

#tossawary tolkien #treebeard #ents #spoilers #long post #tossawary watching #violence #character death

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qfitpac · 8 months ago

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Final thoughts on the Qsmp finale: I think it was incredibly disappointing and disrespectful at every turn, and as with many things in the qsmp I think they could have put in 100x less effort for 100x more reward.

I wish they had just let the islanders freely roam around and say goodbye to their old builds instead of forcing them into a weird and unrelated mini game. For gods sake, Pac and Fit never made it to Chume Labs to see it one last time.

The museum was nice but how about crediting all the people who made those models and assets that were on display? Contrasted with the properly credited fanart it really showed how little the studio values its workers.

It's clear to me that they cared more about getting in that final spectacle (I think there's a good chance a lot of those assets and mobs were originally made for purgatory 3) and leaving the story open for a possible QSMP 2 than actually giving their ccs a chance to give their characters an ending. Watching it all I couldn't help thinking, was the person who built this paid? Was this cinematic made by someone who was compensated for their time? Did the studio give them enough time to make these or was it, as shown before, a rushed and stressful process with an impossible deadline?

The egg video in particular was in incredibly poor taste. After all that the egg admins went through, letting them go without even a thank you let alone actually properly crediting them and paying them, then to just choose their ending for them? Using not just the models (was the person who made those paid?) but aspects of the personalities that the egg admins developed (Ramon's meathead, pepitos plushie, etc)? Come on.

The finale was, and I say this with all possible negative connotations, very in character for a studio that has repeatedly shown that it cares more about visuals and the next big thing than anything else, including the admins and ccs that make it possible. It was flat and convoluted and the only thing that made it watchable was as always the talent and versatility of the players.

I hope there is no qsmp 2. I really do. I don't think it's worth it to keep this brand alive after all the people who have been hurt by it. I'd love to see another server use the real-time translation mod, I'd love to see most of this group of creators make something together, but I don't think it should be under quackity or his studio's control. They've clearly shown that they cannot be trusted to treat their workers properly, to support this big of a project, or to be focused on making a place for creators to tell their own stories the way they want to.

#qsmp #Qsmp neg #Rants

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therightrighthand · 3 months ago

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SCP-8883

SCP-8883 // Ketter Class / Containment Breach // ZK-Class Reality Failure Scenario // 'Goldchild' Protocall in effect

--------

"Greetings, my name is Doctor ██████ from the ███ ██████ ██ department of the SCP Foundation, universe designation ██ ████ ███ ███ ███.

If you have received this documentation, it means SCP-████ has successfully entered your reality to deliver this message to an SCP Foundation member or an organisation of a similar kind. I guess, greetings from across the multiverse [Chuckle] ... anyway.

Sadly, this message is not one of the good tidings but a warning of an anomaly we have designated in our universe as SCP-8883, which has developed as a potential Keter Class threat (Uncontainable depending on your classification system) or invoked a ZK-Class Scenario (Reality has broken down and our end is imminent).

In the event this does happen, we have enacted the 'Godchild protocol', where we reach out to known neighbouring universes that have a high probability of having their own SCP-8883. The goal is to share our findings and research on SCP-8883 so that you may be ready for the coming threat.

If it happens, I mean. This documentation is merely a precaution for something that hasn't even happened yet, so it may just be a waste of time-" [REDACTED] "This documentation will come in two parts, Pre and Post ZK-Class Scenario so there is ample time to properly per pair our findings before it might be 'too late'.

PRE - ZK

"SCP-8883 is a young female girl, (as of █████) around 25 years old, though her age and identity may vary. There is nothing overly anomalous about SCP-8883. In her un-interfered state, she is just a normal human. What allocates her as an anomalous SCP is that she will one day become god, or a god, so to speak. We discovered this during a fact-finding mission with SCP-████ that uncovered this supposed proficy they referred to as the 'Sirpyn Paradox'. It is believed that SCP-8883 will, in some nondescript way, develop into an entity so strong it cannot reside within the walls of reality.

The details on how or when this happened were not provided, but we believed her to be relatively safe. What drew our attention was our attempt to apprehend SCP-8883, and various anomalies interfered with the process. There were 15 attempts to bring her in, and over 48 recorded anomalies one could describe as 'godly intervention'. Flat tyres, floods, lottery wins, sickness, pregnancy, even a meteor destroying a highway. To many around SCP-8883 to be a coincidence.

It's at this point we humoured the theory (now proven) that their future god-self (designated SCP-8883-B) is manipulating fate to stop our efforts. Interestingly, this has only ever been the case in regard to capture; we've never been stopped when our operatives have engaged with SCP-8883 undercover just to 'talk'. We surmised that direct capture of SCP-8883 was in conflict with their 'fate', leading them to become SCP-8883-B, so they intervened. Meaning we had to get creative.

In the end, we had to use SCP-████ to create models, based on the probability, to predict a course of action that would allow us to secure SCP-8883 that would not interfere with their fate. This presented us with an interesting possibility, how much can SCP-8883-B intervene, and how far can we force their intervention?

With the approval of ██████ we orchestrated a series of tests. The first test gave us obvious results, harmless intervention, but by using the probability modules, we were able to, in a sense, corner SCP-8883's fate to a full manifestation of SCP-8883-B and aggressive confrontation. The only visual confirmation we can conform from SCP-8883-B, which hasn't led to an immediate brain aneurysm, is a close likeness to SCP-8883 in shape and form, with a face covered in shadow and piercing green eyes.

With this discovery, we're putting together a proposal to utilise this incredible opportunity. We have the power of a god-level SCP at our disposal, one who is inert and who we can contain and control through predictive model data. If their abilities is as strong as we believe it is, we can use SCP-8883 to destroy other SCP threats.

It's all very exciting!"

POST - ZK

"Mother of god ... what have we done ... W-what have I done ... I hope there are enough analogies about playing god- or tempting fate in your universe ... clearly there wasn't enough in ours" [REDACTED]

"As theorised ... SCP-8883 has been elevated to a Ketter Class SCP, a ZK-Scenario is in effect, and Protocol Godchild has been initiated... I only wish I had more time to better compose myself ... or even amend my last fucking entry- I.... fuck. god I can't" [REDACTED]

"As I mentioned at the start of this documentation, the Godchild Protocol has come into effect and you have received this warning that SCP-8883 has caused a Reality Failure Scenario.

Before I carry on... whoever you are, you must stop this recording IMMEDIATELY and escalate this to the highest level of Authority. If you are part of a SCP Foundation, then this must be taken to The Administrator, or at the very least, The Council... otherwise, you pose a risk not only to your own life but to your universe's too"

"........................................"

"Ok ... if I am talking directly to who I think I am ... kill the person who handed you this documentation, them, and anyone who has any knowledge of this information being passed to you. As we speak, my reality is falling apart because of the information in this document. Whilst we could not contain SCP-8883 we could prevent it, by Leaving. Her. Alone. By knowing someone's fate, you risk intervening with it, and intervened with Del- erm, SCP-8883's fate led to our demise.... I ask- no, BEG you, destroy this documentation, stop the recording now and erase everything. Let them live their lives untested and let fate take its course...

"........................................"

"If you're still listening ... I hope you know what you're doing and the risks with this information. Know, I'm only sharing this to appease curiosity, so you do not give into the same temptation we-.... I did...

After discovering we could control SCP-8883-B's focus, we began to escalate our testing to harvest residual energy created by SCP-8883-B and eventually use them as a weapon. We found we could manipulate SCP-8883-B to destroy other SCP's. I'm not going to list each SCP, but- we had a 100% success rate, and we were able to remove over 80% of our most hostile SCPs. They were everything we ever wanted. And with SCP-████ models the risk was next to 0.

However...

SCP-████ was unable to account for a variable we had no measurement for. Put my fucking trust in that AI-" [REDACTED] "It seemed that every time we coached SCP-8883-B into acting on our behalf, we frayed the fabric of time and space ... like running a blade across a rope, slowly eroding its threads until it eventually snapped.

That's when everything fell apart and SCP-8883 entered a ... I don't know what to call it, demi-god state? A defense mechanism? Whatever- SCP-8883-C, let's just call it that... We've tried to capture as much footage as we could, but we lost every power station across the globe the second shit hit the fan. Any and all attempts to stop SCP-8883-C were met with the same effect, immediate destruction on a cellular level. We don't even have any SCPs to throw at it to slow her down ... But that's only the tip of the iceberg, as SCP-8883-C has weaponised SCP-8883-B against us in a form we've not seen before ... some sort of giant lizard entity the size of manhattan... Apparently, you can see it's destructive trail from space...

The crippling blow wasn't the girl or her knock-off Godzilla, but the sheer power emitting from the two of them that began to tear space and time apart. Past and future are starting to crumble into one another as SCP-8883-C's slow destructive path seems to be echoed simultaneously in every moment in time, all at once.

The effects are ... indescribable ... yesterday I shared a cup of tea with my grandfather, who's been dead for 8 years ... and an hour ago, I rang up my grandson and told him I loved him ... I don't even have a family- or I won't yet , or ... ever will? ... and then there are parts of time that have been completely eviscerated... members of staff have even began to forget their names...

Everything is falling apart...

Now the responsibility lies on your shoulders. You must carry on the Godchild protocol. Not only do I know there is an SCP-8883 in your universe, but in every conceivable universe. The Sirpyn Paradox isn't just a rare freak anomaly, it is a FACT. And if it cannot be contained or destroyed, then it must be maintained...

Gods speed..."

[MESSAGE END]

-------- The winner of this month's Del-veres vote! SCP Foundation Del! I was really looking forward to seeing how this could work because I figure the SCP Foundation would be the only group able to contain/utilise the Sirpyn Paradox, or their universe's Del. Or at least for so long

-- Follow my socials and art discord on my Link.tree Do not use, repost or claim (rp) my art/character Art © @The-Red-Right-Hand

#my artwork #sci fi #del-verse #scp foundation #SCP-8883

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canmom · 1 year ago

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How do you live?

I (finally!) saw Miyazaki's new film 君たちはどう生きるか (How Do You Live?/The Boy and the Heron)! It's been out in the States for a while, and in Japan considerably longer, but it took a while to make its way over here.

I remember at the time it came out, people were having fun riffing on the incredibly cryptic marketing campaign, which consisted only of this rather abstract poster...

In the spirit of this, I resolutely avoided watching any trailers or knowing anything at all about the plot of the film. I picked up a thing or two here and there - I knew to expect some amazing Shinya Ohira animation for example, and you couldn't really avoid seeing the bird with teeth! - but overall, I had no idea.

There's plenty of great writing about this film in English already, such as kvin's fantastic sakugablog piece which discusses the physicality of Ghibli's animation, its weight and springiness, as a throughline. The stuff that kvin talks about really stood out to me as I watched this film. You can likewise read detailed interviews with Toshiyuki Inoue (fantastic interview for sakubutas) and Akihiko Yamashita on fufuro.

First up, the credits of this film are pretty much a who's who of the greatest jp animators of the last 30 years, and they've had some 7 years to cook it, so naturally this film looks fucking amazing. This is absolutely the kind of film that only Miyazaki could direct - its design language feels so familiar and yet it's iterating in all kinds of visually imaginative directions that show that yeah, the old bastard's still got it.

And like, god, man. This film's animation is really something special. Its real-world scenes in particular are full of shots that require an unbelievably strong sense of space, of both subtle and broad acting, the classic Ghibli attention to detail on mechanical objects and everyday tasks. It's full of bouncing and squishing and squeezing and oozing things. It loves to draw crowds and swarms of people and animals. It's the kind of film where any given shot would be the absolute star-of-the-show sakuga moment in just about any other anime film. If you wanted a complete statement of the Ghibli school of animation, it would be hard to do better.

And yet, for all that Miyazaki's known for his tight control over animation and heavy corrections to animators, in this film he had to step back from that kind of role and hand over the sousakkan reins to Takeshi Honda, who steps up admirably - as kvin writes above, bringing in more realist elements to the bouncy Miyazaki style to create a really effective unity that grounds all the big fantastical elements of the film and fills the first act with tension.

Alongside all that excellent key animation, the film's colour and photography departments evidently understand that well-chosen colours and good highlight shapes beat all the digital gradients and overlays you can imagine - the drawings get plenty of form from the strength of the animation, and the flat shading really pops. The backgrounds are as delicious as ever, skyscapes and vegetation and opulent interiors with the just-slightly desaturated and harmonious colours that just kind of remind you that oh yeah, it is still possible to do it this way.

Basically it's a Ghibli film lol. You know how it is.

But what of the story...? What's all this technical magic in service of?

The film's story has something of the feel of a serial story, perhaps reflecting Miyazaki's (in)famous process of working out the film gradually as he draws the storyboards. Certain ideas, like the parakeet empire, arrive in the film rather suddenly and then become fairly central to the plot. There's a clear emotional throughline, but this is not a film that is in a hurry to explain itself more than it absolutely has to. It wants to keep its magical elements numinous and mysterious. I would say, though, it's generally more satisfying in this approach than some of Miyazaki's other later films like Howl's Moving Castle, and resolves a lot more clearly.

So what is it like, About? Well, Miyazaki has been pretty open about channeling a lot of his personal relationships into the film, and a lot of it seems to reflect more or less obliquely on him. It's what they call a 'personal film'. The protagonist's position as the son of an aeroplane factory owner during WWII is straight-up from life. What about the old sorcerer, haphazardly stacking blocks to keep a world alive, and looking for someone to succeed him? The reading's kinda obvious, even if Miya himself says this guy is based on his memory of Takahata. Well, he can be both...

To say more I'm gonna have to delve into the spoiler zone. See you below the cut.

OK so! Let's try and get some thoughts in order.

first, a plot summary type of thing

Our first act introduces us to Mahito at roughly the moment his mother Hisako dies in a hospital fire. This is midway through the war, which is present mostly in the background - now and then we see soldiers marching around, and of course Mahito's dad runs a factory producing warplane parts, not entirely unlike Miyazaki's own father although seemingly a bit higher up the ladder.

We jump forward a little and Mahito's father remarries - to his deceased wife's sister, no less, and she's already pregnant. This is Natsuko, who does her best to play the role of mother, but Mahito still has big traumas and he is understandably not entirely on board with the idea of welcoming a mum 2 who looks almost exactly like mum 1. He moves with Natsuko into a huge old house complex, a mix of older Japanese architecture with a more recent Western wing where the family currently sleeps - and staffed by a small army of colourful old ladies who are eager for any canned meat or cigarettes they can get their hands on.

Also there's this freaky heron that keeps bothering Mahito. It seems to have something to do with a mysterious tower which turns out to have been built by his great-uncle. Mahito visits the tower, but can't make his way inside. Natsuko tells him not to go into the tower.

Mahito goes to school, but naturally they don't much take to the new rich kid on the block, and so after being attacked by his classmates on his way home he injures himself with a rock. (His dumbass dad is like, who did this to you son, I'll fuck 'em up.) For the rest of the movie, he has half his head shaved to accomodate a bandage, which is the sort of attention to detail this movie loves.

The heron has started growing teeth and talking to Mahito, telling him to come to the tower. Mahito is convinced it's a trap, and after a maybe-dream sequence in which Natsuko shoots an arrow to drive off the heron, he steals cigarettes from Natsuko in order to get one of the servants to sharpen his knife, and then constructs a bow and arrow out of bamboo - using a couple of the heron's feathers. Constructing the bow and arrow is shown in immense, loving detail.

In the process, he witnesses Natsuko walk into the forest, and also stumbles on a book: How Do You Live? by Genzaburō Yoshino, which contains a handwritten message from his mother. He looks at this book briefly... and this is about the extent of the connection of the film to the book, beyond thematic parallels.

The maids notice that Natsuko is missing. Mahito tells one of the maids, Kiriko, that he saw her go into the forest, and they follow, finding an old road that gives another approach to the tower. They're greated by the heron man, who is increasingly emerging from the heron's beak to reveal a big warty nose. He's some kind of like... heron selkie or something, a gnome in a heron skin. There's some wonderfully grotesque animation around this guy.

Heron dude taunts Mahito with an illusion of his mother Hisako. Mahito threatens him with the bow - the heron guy is like, do your worst, not realising it's a maaagic arrow. The arrow chases him around the room and pierces his beak, fucking up his magic. At this point, the tower master shows up and orders the heron to guide Mahito. Heron guy sends everyone through the floor into a fantastical world...

Mahito arrives in front of a huge, sinister tomb. He approaches the gate, and a swarm of pelicans walk up behind, crawling all over him and pressing him through the gate. This causes a storm to start brewing, since opening the gate seems to piss off the stones or something...

A fisher woman resembling a much younger Kiriko runs up and chases the pelicans away. She takes Mahito under her wing, explaining that this world is inhabited mostly by dead people, but there are also these little round guys called the wareware, who gain the ability to fly when they eat a fish's guts.

Kiriko, uniquely in this world, has the ability to kill, so she catches fish to sell to the other inhabitants and feed to the wareware; she and Mahito butcher a huge fish. Mahito fairly quickly figures out that she is somehow the same Kiriko that entered with him. She has tiny charms representing the other maids, which serve an apotropaic function.

That night, staying on Kiriko's huge derelict ship of a home, they watch the wareware rise into the sky to be born as humans in Mahito's world. They're attacked by the pelicans, but a fire-wielding magic user called Hisa (hmmmmmmmmmm) drives the pelicans away. Mahito shouts at her not to harm the wareware, but Kiriko assures him that more of the wareware will survive thanks to Hisa's intervention.

Later, a singed and dying pelican explains the pelicans' predicament to Mahito in a scene that calls to mind the animals in Mononoke-hime. The pelicans are foreigners in this world, they don't have anything to eat, so they take it as their role to eat the wareware. The heron man arrives on the scene too, offering to help Mahito find Natsuko as Mahito - coming in to his own as a protagonist more - buries the pelican. Mahito distrusts him but eventually Kiriko persuades them to give working together a try.

Mahito and the heron set out. As they pass through a forest, the heron reveals that thanks to Mahito's arrow, he can't fly and do heron shit anymore - and by magic law, only Mahito can fix the hole. Mahito applies his new woodworking skills to fashion a bung for the hole. The heron tries to stage a top 10 anime betrayal, but then the bung needs more work, so Mahito fixes it, and from that point on, the heron joins the party and he and Mahito are fast friends.

(You might wonder why I just call him 'the heron' and not by a name. He never gets named! He's just the heron man.)

Mahito and the heron arrive at the house of a blacksmith who's supposed to help them find Natsuko, only to find it guarded by big buff parakeet men. The parakeets are splendidly goofy round guys - they remind me of the heedra in Nausicaa. The heron draws the parakeets away, and Mahito enters the house, only to find, uh oh! More parakeets. The parakeets prepare to eat Mahito, who is not carrying a child and therefore fair game unlike Natsuko, but Hisa shows up and burns them with fire magic. She looks just like a young version of Mahito's mum! Funny that. Hisa helps Mahito escape into her house through the fire, and then takes him to infiltrate the parakeets' empire.

In the human world, the maids explain the backstory of the tower to Mahito's dad. It's a weird meteorite that came from space, it turns out, and Mahito's great-uncle built the tower on top of it before eventually disappearing inside. Mahito's dad overprepares in an elaborate getup complete with katana, and goes to try to rescue everyone.

Hisa leads Mahito to a corridor full of doors which open into all the different worlds, including his own world. Mahito briefly glimpses his dad coming to try and rescue him - the two see each other briefly, but the parakeets catch wind of the whole thing and attack, and so Mahito and Hisa have to flee back into the magical world. We see that the parakeet guys turn into regular parakeets when they come into the human world. Mahito's dad becomes convinced he turned into a parakeet.

Mahito and Hisa make their way to the delivery room where Natsuko is resting, waiting to give birth. On their way, lightning starts emerging from the stone - Hisa explains that the stone is sentient and pissed with them. Mahito insists on approaching Natsuko despite this being a huge taboo. They have a heart to heart - Natsuko's mask breaks and she tells Mahito she hates him, while he finally starts calling her mother, as he's assaulted by paper charms that tear at him violently. They part, with Hisa burning the charms to free Mahito, but it's too much and they both pass out.

Mahito dreams of meeting the sorcerer, who stacks irregularly shaped wooden blocks, and explains that stacking the blocks is necessary to maintain the world, buying a few days at a time. The sorcerer reveals the huge flying rock that is the source of his power; he also shows Mahito some blocks, but Mahito somehow divines that these blocks are 'stone for building tombs' and stained with malice. The sorcerer approvingly says this is a good sign for Mahito's ability to succeed him.

While they were asleep, the parakeets have captured Hisa and Mahito. One of them is preparing to eat Mahito, but the heron arrives just in time to save him. They Metal Gear Solid their way through the kingdom while the Parakeet King - a big swaggering guy very like the colonel in Castle in the Sky - goes to press a claim on the wizard, using Hisa and Mahitos' taboo act of entering the delivery room as a bargaining chip. There's some very funny scenes where the parakeets cheer for their king.

Mahito pursues the parakeet king, but the king destroys the staircase behind him, and talks to the sorcerer. The sorcerer is inclined to wave away the transgression, because he wants to let Mahito succeed him, but the parakeet king seems to be bringing him around. I kind of forget how this part went, but the parakeet king goes away from the sorcerer for a bit while Hisa is freed from her prison thing.

Mahito climbs back up with the heron man's help, arriving in the sorcerer's little subplane. The parakeet king quietly follows him, after telling his aides to inform his subjects he was a good king. Mahito approaches the sorcerer, who reveals he has found a new set of blocks, unstained by malice, and again invites Mahito to succeed him. Mahito says that his self-injury is proof of his malice, making him unfit for the job.

At this point, the parakeet king intervenes. Angry at all this sorcerous malarky, he desperately attempts to stack the stones himself, but when they don't stack, he flies into a rage and slices them with his sword. This naturally causes the world to start collapsing, and everyone runs to the doors to escape into the human world.

Mahito has by this point figured out that Hisa is his mum, and he asks if she really wants to go back to their world, knowing that she will very definitely die in a fire not much later. But she is naturally on board with this. Young!Kiriko goes with her, suggesting that she and Hisako entered the magical world at the same time. Meanwhile, Mahito returns to his own time, with Natsuko and the heron. All the various parakeets and pelicans come out through this door too. Old!Kiriko is restored from her apatropaic charm.

As everyone celebrates their safe return (and the appearance of a fuckton of birds), the heron tells Mahito that he ought to forget what happened in the magic world. We skip forward again, with Mahito - now with a baby sibling - setting off to Tokyo. Roll credits!

now let's comment on it

This is not a film that necessarily prioritises an internal logic playing out - new elements enter unexpectedly even quite late in the film. The sorcerer's motivation is murky until late on; the parakeets become major antagonists despite entering only halfway through the film.

There is a certain temptation, knowing how autobiographical this film is, to take it is a roman à clef. Mahito is of course a young Miyazaki; the old sorcerer's concern about finding a successor might be about Miyazaki wondering who should take over Ghibli or if it should just be allowed to die. Under this schema, the parakeets might be Ghibli's legion of fans, or the merchandising empire that prints their designs on every possible product. kvin's article develops this kind of reading, finding some angles I wouldn't have even considered, such as how the idea of weight communicated by the animation factors in to such an allegaroy. It's also something suggested in Miyazaki's own comments about the film, where the sorcerer is Takahata, the heron man is producer Toshio Suzuki...

It definitely helps to know a bit about Miyazaki's background when approaching this film. However, I think it would be reductive to go too far with this kind of reading, and take everything as an allegory for something in Miyazaki's life. The film still has to stand on its own feet!

'Coming of age' is the spin put on it by some outlets, like the BBC. And this is accurate to an extent. The arc of this film is similar to Spirited Away: Mahito starts out sullen and traumatised, but like Chihiro he transitions over the course of his journey in the magical world into the kind of determined Miyazaki protagonist we're used to. On this coming of age angle... well, also like with Chihiro, I don't find the Mahito of the first part of the film especially unsympathetic, his alienation is extremely natural given his situation. Mahito's dad kinda sucks! Living in wartime Japan also really kinda sucks, even if you're the son of a rich dude. But definitely over the course of the film Mahito has a change of heart towards Natsuko, and forms friendships that motivate him to try to protect them. His character arc definitely sees him become 'more prosocial'.

However, there's another angle that's pretty important - the idea of the weight of 'malice', the cursed existences of the pelicans and the like, and the fantasy of building a utopian world that is free of these things. This returns to a theme of Nausicaa, the manga in particular, where Nausicaa discovers that the world she knows - the toxic forest in particular - is actually an elaborate artificial system for cleansing the world of pollutants, that the clean world on the other side will be uninhabitable to her and her people, and that the architects of this system wait in stasis to replace them in this utopian future world. Nausicaa destroys them, commiting instead to an uncertain future.

In Mononoke-hime likewise, we encounter the lepers and former sex workers of Irontown clinging on to the 'cursed' world. Their extractivist project proves incredibly destructive, but the film still regards them sympathetically, and the resolution sees them perhaps finding a new way to live - and San, the feral girl, reconciling herself to the idea of humans.

Here, although the parakeet king forces the decision, Mahito has already declared that he doesn't believe he's fit to oversee a utopia, but instead that his place is in the awful, violent human world.

The film, and the book it's vaguely based on, are titled How do you live? In Japanese, that's a plural 'you' (君たち). There's a lot of ways you could read it, depending on who you take as 'you' - a child asking an adult how to live, or equally a future question of how will you live. This is a lot more explicit in the novel - which I have not read, but here is a summary courtesy of wiki:

Junichi Honda is a fifteen-year-old junior high school student, known by his nickname Koperu, after the astronomer Nicholas Copernicus. He is athletic and academically gifted, and popular at school. Koperu's father, a bank executive, passed away when he was young and he lives with his mother. His uncle (on his mother's side) lives nearby and visits frequently. Koperu and his uncle are very close. Koperu shares about his life and his uncle gives him support and advice. His uncle also documents and comments on these interactions in a diary, with the intent to eventually give the diary to Koperu. The diary writing, which is interspersed with the narrative, provides insight into the ethical and emotional trials that Koperu shared with his uncle. The diary entries, which cover themes such as "view of things", "structure of society", "relation", etc. are in the style of a note written to Koperu.[8]

Thinking like Copernicus that our Earth is a celestial body moving within the vastness of space, or thinking that our Earth is fixed at the center of the universe, are two ways of thinking that, in reality, are not only related to astronomy. Even when we think about things like the world around us or our own lives, the truth is that we are still revolving around them after all.

In the end, Koperu writes a decision on his future way of living as a reply to his uncle, and the novel ends with the narrator asking the question "how do you live?" to the reader.

The author of the novel was a socialist, who had been imprisoned by the nationalist government, and wrote the book intending to impart lessons on ethics. The version of his book published after the war was heavily edited to strip the book of political content. But it's also, perhaps paradoxically, a book that centres on very wealthy characters, aimed narrowly at educated boys, though it became a widely read classic.

Studio Ghibli's films, from both Miyazaki and Takahata, have a habit of being framed as imparting something to the younger generation - something the pair seem to have seen as a mission all the way back in the days of Panda Kopanda. For example, while Grave of the Fireflies is seen as the classic tragic war movie, for Takahata it was also aimed at criticising what he saw as the careless, consumerist generation of the 80s; the stubborn arrogance of the protagonist supposed to reflect on this. It's an attitude that also emerges in their comments about Chihiro. And, indeed, one of the first things we heard about How Do You Live? was that it was aimed towards Miyazaki's grandson - and more broadly towards that generation.

So what does this film have to say to the younger generations? Let's have a look at it from Mahito's POV.

For Mahito, the adults in his life are all pretty complicated. His father is enthusiastic and well-meaning but incredibly oblivious to what his son is going through (we might recall some of what Miyazaki wrote about his father in Starting Point, describing him as basically a grifter). Natsuko is masking pretty hard, trying to play the role of Good New Mum and connect to her newly acquired son, but there's an intrinsic distance. It is understandable that Mahito would want to reject them.

Mahito is... not entirely a passive character, he goes to some efforts to for example fashion the bow and arrow and repair the heron man's beak, but mostly he is pulled around by the plot into a strange world he doesn't understand. At first, his instinct is to retreat, even to the point of self-injury. Once he arrives in the magical world, he has acquired something of a purpose (finding Natsuko), but he gets pushed into near-disaster situations (the pelicans piling up to push him through the gate at the tomb) or stumbles into circumstances where something is expected of him (hey kid, gut this fish!). Gradually though his exposure to this world pulls him out of his shell. He runs into conflicts and injustices that seem intractable - the wareware and the pelicans - and has little power to intervene except to bury the bodies.

Eventually, he gets to carry out his main objective - finding Natsuko - but despite finally deciding to accept Natsuko as his new mother, he finds himself rejected, not just by her but also by the earth. Perhaps feeling responsible for getting her into trouble, his new objective becomes rescuing freshly-damsel'd Hisa. But now new adults want things of him - his great-uncle has decided he'd make a fine successor. Mahito has to make a decision here about what relationships he wants to commit to, what sort of life he wants to build - and he chooses the world he found so alienating at the outset of the film, the one which hurt him by taking his mother, not to the secondary-world fantasy.

It could be a 'this world is all we have' sort of statement, perhaps. But also the last act of the film feels like it gets a bit caught up in Castle in the Sky-style adventure-story beats.

I do feel like some aspects of the film ended up a little underbaked - which is an odd thing to say because it's not a short film and there is so much in it already. But Hisa for example - she's got badass powers and all, but I feel we barely get a chance to get a sense of what motivates her. Why did she enter the fantasy world? She acts at first like she doesn't know Mahito is her future son, but rapidly becomes incredibly devoted to him (in a way that reads a little romancey lmao). So much of her screen time is dedicated to having her convey the secrets of the world that it's hard to get a bead on her as a person.

Likewise, Natsuko - why did she enter this world to have her baby in this special ritual delivery chamber? She clearly knows more than most of the characters, but she gets kind of sidelined after Mahito confronts her, with wizard shit becoming more central. The animation does such a fantastic job of selling her feelings in the first part of the film that it feels like a shame that she drifts away at the end.

The progression of the film feels rather like a dream, where everything is arranged by symbolic significance to Mahito. It makes sense... on a magical level, where the secondary world is shaped primarily by parallels in the real one. So the tiny apatropaic statues of the old ladies protect him because they represent the role the real old ladies have in his life. Hisa has fire magic because Hisako died in a fire. Once Mahito has come to his personal resolutions about returning to the world, the magical one is no longer needed, and it collapses.

This is not such an uncommon role for magic in a story. In Miyazaki's own works, we have Totoro and Spirited Away, where a magical world provides direction or relief to a child's real struggles. Or take for example Okiura's film A Letter To Momo, in which the three yōkai recognise taking care of the grieving Momo as their explicit purpose as spirits. This magical world comes to Mahito to help him come to terms with losing his mother, and reorient himself towards living in a painful world.

Meanwhile, the sorcerer, whether he be Miyazaki or Takahata, is quite a distant figure. He may maintain the magical world by stacking his blocks, may be the authority which factions within it must plead to, but he also rules from afar in a vast empty palace full of long halls and open air spaces. His main company seems to be a big fucking rock, with which he made a 'contract'. He's generally handling it a bit better than, say, Ushiromiya Kinzo - he receives the parakeet king with good humour - but he's a pretty flawed god of his little world. So much of this world seems to pre-exist him, it's not something he constructed. Still, when he shows up, you pretty much have to do what he says.

If this is about Miyazaki's relation to Takahata, it seems like quite a sad portrayal. But 'unapproachable patriarch' does sorta describe their role in the studio from what I understand (c.f. Oshii's infamous article comparing them to the Kremlin).

When it comes to the question of who should succeed Miyazaki, we should probably consider the matter of Yoshifumi Kondō, who was being set up as the next big Ghibli director until his untimely death - which allegedly Takahata was willing to accept the blame for. The mythology built up around Miyazaki and Takahata is double-edged.

Here are some rather startling comments from Toshiyuki Inoue's interview. Inoue is one of the most impressive animators who ever lived in my book, the other star of the realist line besides Okiura. Just have a look at his booru page: iconic scenes from GitS, Akira, Millenium Actress; even in more recent films, he pretty much carried Maquia, and steals the show with his scenes in Miss Hokusai.

And yet even he was intimidated to be working alongside Miyazaki when he first came on board for Kiki's Delivery Service, fresh off Akira:

I believe you’ve always been a fan of Miyazaki’s, why were you scared to work with him? Toshiyuki Inoue: I had heard quite a few scary stories. A lot of acquaintances had worked on Nausicaä, Laputa and Totoro before that, so I knew how scary he could be when he got angry – I had heard stories of people being fired mid-production, things like that. How was it actually? Toshiyuki Inoue: Not as scary as I had imagined. He’d only rarely scream in the studio. But he did get angry. I’d sometimes be called to some separate room and lectured alongside Kōji Morimoto and Masaaki Endō. It felt like being in school all over again.

'Only rarely'. Honestly. Inoue describes how difficult it was for him to adapt his logical, analytical style to Ghibli's stretchy, bouncy characters - and how Miyazaki would disparage him if he, for example, drew a ship inaccurately.

For Inoue, coming back to How Do You Live was something like a 'return match'. He talks about how an older Miyazaki was no longer able to strictly correct the animation, and in general age was limiting him, but he still feels that Miyazaki is fundamentally superior:

Toshiyuki Inoue: I’ve always wished for a return match or a way to redeem myself. But even if I say that, I know I can’t even pretend to rival Miyazaki. I just can’t win. He’s extremely smart and learned, and on top of that, as an animator he always transcends common sense: he’s so talented that I know very well there’s nothing I can do against it. The more I learn about him, the more I realize I’ll never be on that level.

Miyazaki's genius is undeniable, but man... it's not a good mindset to cultivate if you want to find a successor lmao. If even Inoue doesn't feel he can measure up, who the hell could?

Mind you, it does rather seem that Miyazaki had mellowed out by the point of How Do You Live?. Here's Yamashita:

Akihiko Yamashita: As I said, the core of an animator’s job is to follow what the director asks, so whenever I had trouble with that, I’d go see Miyazaki to show him my roughs. He’d advise me on the things that were missing and reassure me about those that were good. He really helped me to gain more confidence in myself.

Reading these interviews underlines pretty hard that we shouldn't get too caught up in the mythology of Miyazaki the mighty auteur. While the story may be all on Miyazaki, and most of the character designs (with the notable exception of Natsuko)... so much of the details of the animation, the stuff that really makes this film land, is primarily shaped by everyone else - Honda in particular, but also the individual key animators who interpreted his scenes. I really need to get my hands on a copy of that Industrial History of Studio Ghibli book to get a less Miyazaki-centric perspective on the studio's history.

I do not feel, having come out of this film, any closer to knowing the answer to that eternally pressing question of how do you live - I guess I'm still working out my answer to that one, and I will be until I die. And maybe that's rather the point. I think this film still carries some of the flaws of Miyazaki's later films - despite having so many iconic scenes, it doesn't quite seem to know where it's going. But I am so glad to have seen this in the theatre (I saw it at the Prince Charles theatre in Soho with friends, the theatre was completely packed!), and glad Miyazaki managed to get this one out before he goes. Whatever happens to Ghibli without its sorcerer, it's been a hell of a thing to witness.

#anime #the boy and the heron #how do you live #studio ghibli #hayao miyazaki #film

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fearfics · 18 days ago

Text

no one but you.

skye riley x fem!reader

friends to lovers, mutual pining, slight?? angst??; skye has a long day of work and the only thing that can help is you :3

warnings: skye's hair pulling is the only thing i think but if there's anything else that might need a warning, lmk!

a/n: heyyy finally posting smth and like i've said before...i wouldn't call myself a writer i'm just a girl who imagines scenarios in her head and needs to write them out sometimes SO if it's quite cheesy and cliche, shhh i know this is just for fun!!! this is in bullet format just because it's an easier way for me to separate my thoughts so sorry if it's hard to read...

also, just like fun fact and im rambling but the main idea i had for this was watching the piano scene and thinking...okay but what if she plays a song for you for the first time...and boom. and the title is taken from no one noticed by the marias :] anyways, if you read this far, i’m kinda proud of this so i hope you enjoy and ty for reading <3

• skye has a rougher than usual day of work leaving her distressed and completely exhausted :(

• she collapses on her bed, her mind racing from the events today but the thoughts all lead back to you. for skye, being around or thinking of you is one of the few things that can help her relax.

• of course, she’d never admit that to anybody because she thinks she sounds crazy but it’s true!

• she runs her hands over her face and sighs before pulling out her phone. clicking your conversation, her thumb hovers over the text box.

• as her eyes move across the screen, she rereads your message from this morning – "good luck in the studio today girl 💗 oh here are the pics from the other night btw 😙" – she smiles softly at the emojis, thinking about the casual dinner you guys had with some friends.

• she swipes through the pictures, mostly silly and cute posing with your food and kissy faces…she can't help but zoom in on the two of you, remembering how pretty she thought you looked with your hair loose and makeup slightly smudged and -

• OKAY so maybe she’s incredibly down bad and that’s why just the thought of you is so calming for her!

• BUT she doesn’t want to bother youuuu. while you’re not living the same hectic lifestyle she is, you could still be busy, you know. you have your own life and things to do and take care of. she glances at the time noticing it’s later than she thought. you could already be sleeping…

• she can feel her hand rising, fingers reaching for That Spot in her hair as she begins to overthink even messaging you at all.

• *DING* she shifts her eyes back to her phone, locking onto the blue text bubble – “skyeee you haven’t said anything all dayyyy like not even the usual picture of your lunch i was visually starving girl”

• she lets out a deep breath, palm falling flat on her head. oh, thank god you texted something first..wait that means you were thinking about her…and so late at night too…which could mean nothing…

• she thinks for a second before replying – “sorry it was just super busy today..had to spend extra time in the booth im exhaustedd” sent.

• she places her acrylic nail between her teeth, biting out some nervous energy.. should i just ask? oh, fuck it i’ll just ask.

• “actually um could you possibly come over to my place? i could really use someone to talk to rn… i can send a car or whatever you know but if it’s too late you don’t have to that’s totally fine” sent.

• she continues chewing her nail as she watches the three dots pop up indicating you’re typing. – “oh skye :( don’t worry about it! ofc it’s not too late. you know i’ll come over any time. i’ll be there soon <3”

• <3. <3!!!!

• okay, she’s normal about you. she’s fine...just smiling too hard at her phone before replying with her own “<33”

• while she waits for the driver to bring you to her place, she takes a hot shower, letting the heat relax her body and ease her mind for as long as she needs. after getting into comfier clothes, she heads to the kitchen to grab a water. a sigh escapes her as she places her hands on the counter. the nerves course through her body once more as she thinks about you on your way over. she takes a breath before unscrewing the water and gulping down half the liquid. the bottle makes a loud *thunk* as she sets it down on the counter. she still can’t believe she’s gotten used to doing that.

• she reaches to replace the cap when she hears a knock on her door. you’re here. the exhaustion in her body replaces itself with…excitement? anxiety? she doesn’t know. she’s just happy that you’re here.

• screwing the cap back on as fast as she can, she takes quick footsteps over to the door, sliding a little as her sock covered feet don’t leave the ground. catching herself on the wall, she steadies herself, fixing the hair that fell in her face. god, she’s mess.

• she reaches for the knob while tip toeing up to take a peek through the peep hole. she couldn’t help but crack a smile at your hello kitty pjs before opening the door.

• you wear an empathetic smile as you hold up your bag, “i brought candy.”

• skyes let’s out a breath of relief, smiling back and relaxing her shoulders, “you. are amazing. get in here.” she grabs your arm, pulls you in and locks the door back up while you let out a small laugh.

• “i know, i know." you reply removing your coat and shoes. “so,” you start to speak as skye follows slowly behind, smile still lingering on her lips. you jog over to the couch plopping yourself into the seat, “you get first pick as always.” you hold the bag open, shaking the sides as you usher her over to take a seat next to you.

• skye tilts her head, jokingly rolling her eyes as she hovers her hamd over the bag. “i’ll take…oo these! thank you very much.” she pulls out a blue bag and sits herself to the right to you. you knew that blue bag all too well.

• “not the gummy wormsss! you know those are my favorite!” “we can share! we always share.” "right, right..."

• the conversation continues while you empty the rest of bag on the table. you take turns sharing candies, telling skye a story about the cutest cat you saw outside the shop and how you almost brought him with you.

• there was a moment of silence before you spoke up “did you want to talk about today?”

• skye glances down at her fingers staying quiet for a moment “uh…yeah, no, i mean...it’s just…” she takes air in through her nose and runs a hand through her hair, breathing out.

• you watched her facial expression change. there was nothing more you wanted than to just hold her in your arms and caress and kiss her troubles away. you never knew how far you could go without it feeling weird. what if she didn’t reciprocate?

• you always settled for holding her hand. it kept her from teasing with her hair and suppressed the urge to pull at the blonde locks and instead play with your fingers.

• “we were um…working on recording this new song. i’d played it for them a little while ago and they really liked it.” she glances at your face, your full attention on her, arm resting on the back of the couch with your chin sitting in the palm of your hand. god, you were so pretty…

• you smile softly, “of course they did. you make great music, duh.” she returns the smile at your compliment. her eyes begin to dart around the room, the stress making it’s way back into her head. you rub your thumb over the back of her hand that was still sitting in yours.

• “while we- while we were recording, it was fine but um…there’s this one part in the song i wanted to be sung a certain way but..they didn’t agree. told me to sing it the way they wanted. 'cause it ‘sounded better’. ‘tracks would’ve been faster to mix’. or some shit. i tried to argue it but…it just started something bigger and my mom was there. god, my mother…she’s no help. just wants me to follow along like usual…”

• you felt a tug at your heart as skye spoke. “oh, skye…i know how passionate you are about your music. it's awful when there’s assholes like that who just wanna make something quick and easy. it’s hard for people like you who actually care about the quality of their work. i don’t see where you did anything wrong."

• skye wipes away a couple of tears. “hey,” you reach for her other hand, interlocking both your fingers, “i know for a fact that the way you wanted your song, mind you, your song...that you wrote …i know it sounded beautiful, okay? and perfect while we’re at it.”

• skye chuckles, speaking softly “please, how could you say that if you haven’t even heard it?”

• “show me.” your volume matches hers but your words catch her attention, eyes shifting to your face. silence. “if you’re up for it, you know.”

• skyes heart races as she feels a mixture of anxiety and vulnerability. it’s not like she hasn’t sung in front of you before but right now it feels much more intimate.

• she hesitates for a moment “okay…yeah.” you smile in excitement. you were basically her number 1 fan. and she would do anything for you. this is a win-win situation.

• skye stands up to go to the piano, a rush of butterflies in her stomach as you follow behind. she adjusts the bench a little before sitting down and you stand to the side of the large instrument, elbow making contact with the top as your chin rests in your palm again.

• skye fiddles with her journal trying to find the correct page. she nervously flips onto the page titled ‘just my name’ and looks over at you before placing her fingers on the keys.

• ‘i’ve got thick skin but i’m hollow…made up of broken parts...’ from the the first line you’re mesmerized (as usual) by her voice. you listen on, paying attention to the lyrics and how relaxed skye begins to look after focusing on the melody, ‘is this how my story’s told? i get higher 'til my worlds on fire and i'm ice cold…’ seeing the raw emotion in her facial expressions as she closes her eyes, almost like she’s reliving her memories. you can tell how much this song and the lyrics really mean to skye and her experience. oh, your sweet skye…

• the final notes echo through the room. skye removes her hands from the piano, waiting for you to say something, ANYTHING…

• but your response doesn’t come. you instead take a few steps over and wrap your arms around her shoulders. her head finds its place in your neck and her arms take place under yours as you sit down beside her. you sit together like this for a moment before speaking. “that was beautiful, skye. just like i said it would be.” you whisper, your thumb caressing the back of her head, her breath felt on your neck.

• “mmm you’re just being nice 'cause you’re my friend.” she deflects. “skye, c'mon.” you pull away leaving your hands on her shoulders and look her in her eyes, “i wouldn’t lie to you. especially, especially, about your music. i know how much it means to you.”

• skye can’t help the blush that creeps up on her cheeks becoming hyperaware of the close proximity between you two. theres a flutter in your stomach at the slight nudge of her hand against your thigh.

• she clears her throat before speaking “thank you, y/n. for everything, really. i'm so so so grateful to have you in my life. i don’t know what i’d do without you.”

• okay, you actually need to kiss skye so bad. her eyes glossy from the tears, the beauty mark by her lips that were soft and pouted. if the look she was giving you wasn’t enough alone, everything she just confessed solidified the feelings you couldn’t deny any longer.

• skye’s breath gets caught in her throat as she feels your hand softly take place on her cheek. the heat of the moment seems to last forever as you both stare into each other's eyes, your faces just inches apart. the unspoken feelings have been building up for so long neither of you can fathom the situation that’s unfolding. your heart is beating so loudly that you can hear it in your ears as you both sit there, hoping hers was doing just the same.

• your eyes flicker across her soft features taking one last look at her lips before returning to her eyes. “would it be like kinda crazy if we just, you know…kissed right now? i mean like if you wanted to. because i definitely want to and it would be nice but if-“

• skye lets out a puff of laughter and you’re left with a slightly amused yet confused look on your face. “god, y/n, i thought i was bad at this.” your hand falls back to her shoulder, “um what exactly is that supposed to mean?” “nothing, nothing...”

• you smirk at the casual banter, “okay, okay…so…” “oh, come here.” skyes confidence boosts as she takes your face in her hands and your lips finally touch. your eyes flutter closed and skye can feel the smirk still resting on your lips as you respond to the kiss.

• it starts out soft and slow, the gentle press of your lips against each other. but as the initial kiss sparks something between the two of you, it quickly deepens. your mouths moving hungrily against each other, the taste of the fruity candy lingering on your tongues, skyes hands running through your hair as your hands have found themselves just above her chest, toying with her necklace.

• as you two lose yourself in the moment, falling into each other, you lean a little too far, elbow landing on the piano keys. the loud, earsplitting chord jolts you back to reality, breaking the kiss. your breathing is heavy and faces are flushed with surprise and the realization of what just happened. you both can’t help but burst into giggles, the tension from before fades into a light hearted moment.

• as the giggles subside, you look at skye, “maybe.. we should take this somewhere else or something…” skye sucks her teeth, a few butterflies lingering at the bottom of her stomach, “oh is that so?”

• you roll your eyes before standing up. taking skyes hands, you pull her up with you. “well...yes. don’t ask stupid questions.” skye chuckles as she’s dragged along, her heart racing with anticipation and excitement to finally be able to kiss you the way she’s always wanted.

#skye riley x reader #skye riley imagine #skye riley imagines #naomi scott #skye riley #smile 2 x reader

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alittlebitofloveliness · 8 months ago

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Ok so I have this idea for a really funny crack fic/alternate universe where Steve Randle has too many auto shop credits but not enough arts credits to graduate and Ponyboy Curtis returns to school late after recovering from a concussion so all the visual arts classes are full so they both get dragged kicking and screaming forcibly enrolled in a varsity drama course. Ponyboy 'bad attitude' Curtis and Steve 'grumpy af' Randle are forced to band together because no one else is on their side. The whole gang finds it hilarious. Steve tried to complain to Soda but Soda just laughed in his face. Pony tried to get Darry to show off his muscles and get him excused but Darry told him 'it was a good way to get out of his comfort zone, and anyway Pony it's two credits instead of one so you can take a spare next year'. Ponyboy 'i'm not shy I just don't wanna dance around in tights' Curtis bemoans this to Steve 'why the fuck do I have to pretend to be a fucking tree I'm not a tree I'm a person' Randle, who is the only person to offer any sort of sympathy. Their teacher, an old school but slightly eccentric fellow is not to be deterred and much to Pony and Steve's horror gives them each speaking roles in the play they're going to be performing at the end of the year.

To make matters worse the teacher chose West Side Story as the play. Ponyboy ‘you mean we have to SING?’ Curtis and Steve ‘they’re making being a gang look dumb!’ Randle are forced even closer when the gang finds out. Ponyboy ‘you can’t make me wear makeup NO not even stage makeup’ Curtis has the biggest fight in living memory with Johnny Cade. Steve ‘I ain’t dancing, NO I ain’t’ Randle gets into a physical altercation with Dallas Winston. Two-bit Matthews and Sodapop Curtis buy front row seats. Darry takes off work. The four of them watch the most wooden performance of their lives as Ponyboy ‘forgot his lines the second the curtain raised’ Curtis and Steve ‘can’t sing to save his life’ Randle are the worst supporting cast members in theatre history. Two-bit never lets them hear the end of it. Soda keeps photos as blackmail. Johnny refuses to stop mocking their incredibly flat line deliveries. Ponyboy’s ears are never going to go back to normal they’re THAT red.

Miraculously they both barely pass the class. The night they get their marks Ponyboy ‘I’m never fucking doing that again’ Curtis and Steve ‘if we ever get dragged into a play again let's just agree to off each other’ Randle have a beer together and agree never to speak of the ordeal ever again.

#the outsiders #ponyboy curtis #steve randle #darry curtis #sodapop curtis #two bit mathews #johnny cade #dally winston #the outsiders fanfiction

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curvykittyyssmutfics · 1 year ago

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A random au where bucky is a car mechanic who is fixing his single sexy next neighbor, reader's car. She was wearing slightly revealing clothes to want to get banged by bucky. Luckily it work!!!

The Piper: paid

A/N: Soooooooo fucking sorry about the time in between my last post my wonderful people. Doing my absolute best to make lemonade outta the lemons life keeps whippin at the back of my damn head. Anyway, next story will also be a request as I have so many to get done. Probs won't be doing any thing else till I get those done. Anyway.. On to the fic! Enjoy!

"Dammit!"

Bucky's frustrated outburst, along with something metal clattering against his garage floor is audible as I walk up his long, wide, driveway. Listening to him grumble aggressively about "a piece of shit black lil mercedes" makes me chuckle heartily to my self. Expletives about the damage I staged seems to be most common, along with a couple grunts from an unknown task clearly exerting his strength.

The way his breath puffs out entices the introverted slut in me to visualize him underneath me in immense bliss while I ride his dick to my satisfaction, those heavy huffing pants spilling from his lips. Hopefully today's the day I make my dreams come true.

Looking left to right, I notice there's not a soul outside at the moment. That just means step one of my plan is already in action. The dainty diamond rolex on my wrist confirms it's 5pm. Right on time to get fucked and filled with Bucky's nut till it leaks in my panties. Mmmm... Can't wait to rub em all over my pussy later; his milky cream acting as lube while I make myself cum so fuckin hard. I'm lickin my full heart shaped lips in anticipation while plottin on this poor unsuspectin man.

Passing by his new deep blue jaguar, I run a finger along its pristine paint job as I spot Bucky on a creeper underneath my Mercedes. He takes that moment to run a hand through his fresh cut dark locks while wishing it absolute death. It's impossible not to feel a smidge of guilt at the purposeful trouble Bucky's going through at the moment but if everything goes my way, I fully intend to make it up to him by the end of the evening. Shit, hopefully multiple times this evening. It's outta my power not to smile wide at the way my soakin wet pussy flutters at the thought.

Leaning against his ride with palms flat on the hood, I eye fuck my prize thoroughly. Daddy looks so fucking good in his fitted navy blue tee and snug black jeans on his back, his muscled thighs spread wide. The bottom of his shirt lifts a bit to reveal a peek of his firm, incredibly toned tummy as his hips jut upwards. Dark brown boots spread apart wide when he repositions himself, and the fat ass bulge in between his legs grabs my attention real quick.

I'm so fuckin horny just from starin at Bucky, that I gotta squeeze my thighs together for just even a hint of pressure on my pulsating center. My shorts are past drenched where they rest sticky against me. The arousal drippin out plasters my brown thick thighs as my needy little cunt clenches rapidly around nothing. My nipples are so fuckin hard from lightly rubbing against the extremely transparent fit I chose just for him.

"Hey Buck, whats the progress on my baby?" I finally grab his attention as I drum my glossy short jet black nails on the hood of his car.

The wheels on the creeper squeak as he rolls from underneath the source of his current troubles and stands. His eyes focus on the black grime on his hands and he heads to the small sink in the corner of his garage as he responds.

"Woman, I don't know how you manage to damage something on this vehicle every week but it's gotta stop. I'm startin think you just like to come see me."

"Well why not? You're a sight for sore eyes, good lookin."

He dries his hands while laughing at my brazeness and, as always, not taking my corny flirtation serious.

"Boy, you laughin like I won't fuck the daylights outta you right fuckin now."

That flippant response however has him spinnin on his heels to face me. Bucky's vibrant blue eyes grow to orbs and he's rendered speechless as he thoroughly takes in my damn near non existent ensemble. This man is staring at the swell of my perky titties so intently that I know step 2 of my plan is gonna be a piece of cake and I really hope its not my imagination when noticing a twitch from the protrusion in his black jeans.

Dropping the cloth in his hands to the garage floor, he takes long strides till he's standing outside in front of me. His pretty pink lips part and close multiple times as he struggles to speak as he gazes at my nipple covers. Wonder what Daddy's next moves gonna be..

Bucky doesn't say anything at first; but the way he lustfully takes me in gives me goose bumps. His big hands reach around me to grip under my ass and hoist me up against his body. I don't hesitate to wrap my arms and legs around him as he walks us to his parked car, layin me across the warm hood.

"Damn sweetheart, where you plan on goin lookin like this?" Bucky asks, eyes still darting around my body as he presses his clothed hard dick between my legs. The pressure of him against my pussy feels heavy, has my clit thumpin wildly and I'm grindin back without a thought.

"I have a date tonight." I respond breathlessly and that makes his light crystal cerulean eyes snap to mine.

"That right? What're you doin underneath me then, woman? Huh? A little pregame?" He teases, leaning in so close that our lips almost touch.

I shake my head at his questioning as my cheeks heat up from his words. Still, its difficult to feel true embarrasment as his hands glide slowly over my frame, leaving a trail of warmth that makes me press into his palms. Bucky's touch and proximity stuns me a bit, makes my brain fuzzy and pussy clench for him ferally. The small sexy smirk playin at the corner of his lips turns me on just as much as him dry humping me in broad daylight ontop his brand new ride.

"Huh y/n? Is that it? Did you come to me first cause you wanna cum for me first?" He chuckles at me.

Leaning down, his soft lips pecks light kisses from the cheek to my ear. His fingertips skim under my tight bottoms, so dangerously close to my clit as he nips and sucks at my skin. I'm moaning and nodding my assent as I tug him to press against me firmly by the loops of his jeans.

"Fuuuuck.. Lemme feel you then pretty girl."

Bucky's fingers finally dragging across my throbbing button lightly, makin me damn near seize underneath him. I do nothing to mask the loud gasp of his name as the pleasure from just one swipe has me squeezin my eyes shut and grabbin at the top of his jeans in a death grip.

"Damn, my girl is soooo sensitive."

His low groan at my ear makes my soaked pussy flutter quicker and I can feel myself becoming desperate from his teasing touches. The sensation of one hands roaming up my body to gently squeeze over my left tit as the other sweeps across my pussy has me choking on my breaths with a heaving chest. Bucky lifts his head to watch me as he slowly traces circles around my clit, never fully pressing down on it the way I crave.

"Pleeease Buck, pleeeeease." I beg for him to give me more as my incessant yanking on his bottoms pops open the silver button and zipper.

A surprising thanks to the foregoing of underwear is definitely due because I'm then gifted with fattest dick I've ever seen. He's so. Fucking. Perfect. Almost pretty if it werent how girthy his shaft is, the angry flushed head of his dick drooling an abundant stream of precum. I easily notice the weight of him prevents it from slapping upwards; the thick tip of his cock points at my slippery slit. I don't stop pulling at him, humping the tip of his dick while I continue to plead for him to give me what I want most.

"Okay, honey, okay. I'll give you what you want. But lemme take you inside- haaaah, ooooh fuuuuck.."

Our moans mingle togther as one of my harsh tugs forces a few inches of his dick inside my awaiting core. Bucky eyes are wide as saucers as he stares where we connect with an open mouth. His breathing is harsh and loud; strong chest rising and falling rapidly as he quickly grabs my hands from his jeans. I immediately grieve as his touch leaves my tit and clit but my pussy involuntarily clutches at the head of his dick as he pins my wrist to the hood of his car.

"Jesus, woman. Mmmm.. Dammit, aaaaahhh fu- you couldn't wait till I got you inside?"

"Noooo, James. Want you, NEED you noooow. Please Jaaames, pleeease!" I don't notice the volume of my voice rising as I start to lose my fuckin mind.

Bucky's gaze is piercing but frantic, darting from the small puddle forming underneath me on the hood of his car to the way I'm hangin off the end of his dick. But I think it's the way I whine his first name that breaks his resolve. He briefly halts pinnin me down to put my legs over his shoulders. He's then scooping my wrists together in one hand and covering my mouth with the other.

"Fine, pretty girl, don't say I didn't warn your bad ass. Tried to give us some privacy. Now you gonna take this dick no matter what."

The first pump of his cock has him slidin in halfway, the river spilling from me aiding his stroke in. Still, his fat ass shaft splits my delicate walls apart swiftly, the intense pressure has my glossy y/e/c eyes and lined lips opening wide. I squeal loudly gainst his palm, not expecting Bucky to already be sitting in my guts even though he wasn't all the way in yet. WTF..

"Fuuck, sobigBuck, you're HUGE." I whimper, peering up at him with vacant eyes. He leers down at me with a knowing smile.

"Yeah, but my girls gonna have to get used to it huh?" He asks, starting fuck up into my gushy slit.

I don't mean to yank at his hold on my wrists but his next 2 thrust are so fuckin deep. My resistance doesn't free me, though it pulls him off balance and he slides in to the hilt. The tension in my tummy deepens as I feel his cock diggin into my pussy in places no man's ever reached. If it weren't for the hand cupping my mouth, I'm sure the scream I let out would be deafening. Bucky moans out praises as I squeeze my eyes shut tight and try my best to breathe through my nose.

"You're doing so damn-ohshit- weeeeell honey, takin me sooooo good. Mmmmmm.. Chokin the fuckin life out my dick y/n. Not s-sure how long I can last in this hot, tight ass, little pussy, sweetheart. Fuuuuuuck.. Keep being a good girl for me, try to keep quiet okay?"

I can feel Bucky's stare on me even through my close lids, so I nod my compliance. In reality, I pray to god that i dont scream out 'Daddy' for the whole neighborhood to hear while he's dickin me down.

He takes his hands from my wrists and mouth, sliding them down for a quick grab of my plump brown breasts, then to grip at my waist. The pull of his dick slowly slidin out then swiftly plunging back inside has me panting loudly with furrowed brows. I have to cover my own mouth this time, both hands pressed against my lips as he repeats the motion of his hips over and over until he's fucking me in a unhurried but deeply precise rhythm.

"Ohmygod James! Sogood-you'resogood! Don't stop, pleeeease d-don'tstop!" My muffled cries are crazed as he finally stuffs me with dick.

"I won't, honey, won't stop till you cream all over me. Wouldn't dreeeeam of it, baby. Can't stop till you cum on my cock. Fuuuuuck you feel like heaven baby, pussy got me ready to nut an we jus started. Haaah oooh God, sooo good, need you to cum first, y/n."

I'm already covered in perspiration as the breeze races across my nut brown skin and cools me down. Its about the only thing I notice, sounds of the passing cars and chirping birds drowned out by the loud rushing in my ears as Bucky thoroughly fucks the shit outta me. The pleasure swirling in my tummy is so fucking taut, and I know when I cum it's gonna be fucking spectacular.

His unrushed pace begins to speed up, the impact of him pumpin into me rocks his car back and forth as his grunts become more frequent. My knees tremble near his ears from the onslaught, from hearing how good Daddy feels because of me.

He looks just as delicious as he sounds, his body so fuckin tense as I witness how he loses himself in my pussy. Normally his light blue eyes are what stun me, but the dark pupils so damn dilated captivate me into a trance. I stare back helplessly as he gives me the best dick I ever had.

The hands holding my waist clutch snugly, usin his leverage to help fuck me a bit faster. His dick twitches against my walls heavily as Bucky groans out his pleasure, grunts out how he can't take the creamy ring getting thicker around the base of his dick.

"Can I-mmmmohfuckohfuckhoney-can I kiss you sweetheart?"

The sugary sweet question is sudden and takes me aback, is almost funny considering how severely deep he's seated inside of me. I might've even laughed if I wasn't keening from the amazing dick I was currently receiving. Too overwhelmed to answer, I release my mouth and clasp my fingers behind his neck, pulling his face to mine.

Bucky presses a quick kiss to my mouth with soft pink lips. Then another. And one more, the third one deepening with passion. It doesnt matter that he slows the pace of his hips to a crawl again; he continues to grind and dig so deep that his cock curves and hits a firm but gummy spot inside my cunt. It's too damn difficult after that to keep in sync of his lips as he drags his spasming dick across my g spot with too much fuckin accuracy. My sobs against his mouth doesn't stop Bucky's assault on my body. I know what time it is when his hand leaves my waist to press a firm quick circle directly on my clit.

"Mmmmm, pussy f-feels too fuckin 'mazin y/n, sooooclosebaby. I'm gonna buss babygirl, gonna fill that pretty lil kitty to the brim. Need you to cum too, honey. Pleeease." Bucky pleas with me in between messy damp kisses.

I'm way too near my end for full sentences, but from the way I mewl 'James' repeatedly, he seems to get the point. His grinding comes to an abrupt halt before he pulls his dick all the way out and vigorously stabs back in over and over, smashing my g spot and flicking my clit ferociously.

"Bu- haaaah! Aaaahh fuuuu- James! Ohgo- mmmm.. Uhn, uhn, uhn, JAMES!"

My orgasm is almost incomprehensible at first, the pressure in my gut exploding, spiraling outta control and I squirt fiercely against his torso. Warm lips engulf my mouth, sucking and nipping, probably to hush the animalistic noises coming from me as I quiver and shake underneathe him. Its like an avalanche of sensation, so intense I have to grip and claw at his shoulders to ground myself.

"Ahhhh, fuck y/n! Can't take feelin you gush my dick like this. Gonna give this pussy just what she needs honey, fucking cummin sweetheart! Ahhhh shiiiit! Sogood, sogood! Fuuuuuck!" Bucky huffs and puffs his pleasure against my swollen lips.

His fist slams down against his hood, ceasing his rubbing on my pulsating clit as he spurts deep inside my trembling cunt. I can't help but to soak in his grunts of love and praises to me.

Baring his weight on me to keep me in place, he splashes another lava hot jet of cum against the walls of my pussy and it feels too fucking good to feel James Buchanan Barnes fill me up with savagely massive load of cum. I watch him quake as he erupts 2 more explosive sprays inside before pulling out, shooting the last of his cum on my cocoa brown slit.

"You planned this.." Bucky accuses, not wasting any time to catche his breath. His eyes planted where he smears his thick cream allover my pussy as he waits patiently for my response. Daddy doesn't stop till my pussy's covered in his cum. Only then does slip my legs from his shoulders, my snug bottoms back in place and his still very hard dick back into his jeans.

Tired eyes meet my heavy-lidded gaze but I take a few deep breaths to steady myself before I answer. My pussy is already sore but fluttering for more as I bask underneath Bucky's muscular frame.

"I did. Came up with a mastermind plan." I say proudly, my own smirk comin out to tease him.

"Oh really? And how many steps did this 'mastermind plan' have?" He asks with a raised brow, as he zips and buttons his pants

"Just 4." I answer shortly, knees comin up to squeeze at his hips and rub my hands down his abs to the loops of his jeans.

"Which were?"

"Well step 1, purposefully fuck up my car so-"

Bucky cuts me off mid sentence, leaning down so the tip of his nose almost touches mine. His hands grip each of my thighs firmly as quickly yanks me flush against his body and speaks in a low growl.

"I knew it woman! I've been wasting my fuckin time workin on your goddamn car for weeks and- You know what? Talk is cheap; time to pay the piper, honey."

#bucky x reader #black reader #daddy k!nk #black fanfiction #all readers #smut #bucky x female reader #bucky x black!reader #poc reader #creamp!e #public exposure #public fun #dirty talk #dom bucky barnes

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